1600s 2000

Telescopes
2020 – 30 meter telescope
General Properties
 Telescopes - All Shapes and
Sizes
Personal
Sizes

Future

Current Scientific
Observatory
Basic Terminology
• Finderscope – small
telescope mounted
along larger one to
assist in finding targets
• Aperture – diameter of
mirror or lens
• Mount – support
structure that holds
telescope and allows
for pointing and
tracking stars
• Tube – open or closed
varieties
• Eyepiece – optical
assembly for visual
viewing. Scientific
telescopes normally do
not have eyepieces.
 Types of Telescope Mounts
Dobsonian
Alt-Azimuth
Altitude-Azimuth mount (Alt-Az)
•Moves in altitude (up and down)
and azimuth (left and right)
•Requires two motors to track
•Field of view rotates
•Has a blind spot at the zenith
German Equatorial
Fork mount
Equatorial Mounts
•Aligned with earth’s rotational
axis.
•German Equitorial - Long arm
with counterweights
•Moves east-west, north-south
•Requires one motor to track
Field Rotation with Alt/Az
telescopes
Field Rotation over 24 Hours

• Observer’s latitude
• Right ascension
and declination of
object
• Earth’s sidereal
motion
Field Rotation – Looking in an
Eyepiece

The star will be centered, but surrounding stars will

rotate.
Effects of Earth’s rotation
Equatorial Telescope Mounts
 Telescope Tubes

Closed tube –
generally bad
because air is
trapped inside
Open tube – allows air flow. Important
consideration for science telescopes is that
they be the same temperature as their
surroundings to reduce air motion.
 Telescope Magic Numbers
 Aperture - Diameter of lens or mirror
 Focal length – distance from
mirror/lens to focal point
 Focal ratio = focal length/diameter
– Low focal ratio = short focal length,
wide field of view (for example f/3)
– Long focal ratio = long focal length,
small field of view (for example f/16)
 The Job of a telescope
 To collect light!
– Your eye is actually a
small telescope
– Light collecting power is
controlled by the iris
which varies from 2mm
(daytime) to 8mm(0.4
inches) (nighttime)
– Focus can also be
changed w/o knob
– This 8mm telescope
reveals several
thousand stars from a
dark site!
 Increase angular
resolution
 Key Property of all Telescopes
 Light gathering power
– This is dependent on the area of the telescope
lens/mirror.
– Area = πr2
 How much light is collected?
– Comparing telescopes
 (diameter telescope 1)2/(diameter telescope 2)2
– Telescope with 2 times the diameter of another
telescope has 4 times as much area
– Telescope 10 times as large collects 100 times more
light
 How faint can different telescopes
detect objects? 700

Astronomers classify
600
500

Photons
brightness in terms
400
Line 1
300

of “magnitudes”
200
100

 It is not a linear
0
1 100 200 300

system Number of Count

 Relative system
120

100

– Vega is designated 80

magnitude = 0 Relative Intensity

60 Series2

40

 m1 – m2 =-2.5 log(f1/f2) 20

0
1 2 3 4 5 6
Magnitude

The Magnitude System
History of Magnitudes
– Earliest astronomical catalog created by Hipparcos in late 2nd century BC.
– Divided visible stars into 6 classes by brightness
 Brightest star seen by eye – 1st magnitude
 Faintest star seen by eye– 6th magnitude – limit of human perception.
– Telescope (1600s) revealed fainter stars – early system inadequate.
 William Herschel started the revisions
 Finished by Norman Pogson in 1856
 Logarithmic scale in terms of intensity
 Originally Polaris asssigned magnitude of 2, but Polaris is variable!
– Modern fiddling- Switched to Vega  magitude =0
 m1 – m2 =-2.5 log(f1/f2) f = flux or energy (units usually ergs cm 2 sec-1)
 The magnitude scale is relative – always compare one star with another.
 Bright objects have negative magnitudes  Sirius is m=-1.4
 A fifth magnitude star is 2.5 times brighter than a 6 th magnitude star
 A change of 5 magnitudes = 100 times brightness
 Magnitudes are wavelength dependent!
 There are two types of magnitudes:
– Apparent magnitude – usually denoted with m
 The brightness a star seems to be to us here on earth
– Absolute magnitude – usually denoted with M
 brightness that a star would have if it were placed 10 parsecs away.
 Magnitudes can be used to determine distance
– M – m = -2.5log (D/10)2
– Distance modulus
 M=m + 5 – 5 log(D)
– If you can determine M (by theoretical means??) you can solve for D
– Sun’s absolute magnitude is 4.7
– Sun’s apparent magnitude is -26
– Faintest star detected now is ~24TH magnitude
– Sirius is the brightest star in our sky m=-1.46
 Sirius

Sirius B

Sirius m = -1.46
Sirius B m=8.84
Area of Telescope Lens/Mirror and
Limiting Magnitudes
– What does this mean in terms of magnitudes for visual telescopes?
– Area= πr2
– Let’s say the eye has a diameter of 0.5 inches
– Your eye can see stars to 6th magnitude
 2 inch telescope has 16 times the light gathering power as much as eye
– Can see stars down to about 10th magnitude
 4 inch telescope has 64 times as much as your eye
– Can see stars down to about 12th magnitude
 10 inch telescope has 400 times as much area
– Can see stars down to about 14th magnitude
 8 meter (8.7 yrds) telescope can see stars 2,000,000 fainter than your eye can
see
– Can see stars down to about 21st magnitude

 Limiting magnitude
Mlimit = 16.8 + 5log(D*10)
D is telescope mirror diameter in meters
Using a CCD instead of the eye will improve about 5 stellar magnitudes
 Vega, Altair, Deneb
• Vega mag=0
• Distance= 25 lyrs
• Altair mag=0.77
• Distance = 17 lyrs
• Deneb mag=1.25
• Distance = 1500 lyrs

• Which star is putting

out the most energy?
 Resolution
Resolution
– The ability to separate the images of stars or other
objects that are close together.
– Diffraction - the bending/spreading of waves when
they strike a barrier or pass through an aperture.
Wavelength dependent.
– ΔΘ = (1.22)λ/D – for a circular aperture
 24 inch telescope – 0.2 arc seconds
 Hubble Space telescope can resolve 0.05 seconds of
arc
 To improve resolution, increase size of
telescope
 Alberio

Alberio in small scope

Alberio to your eye 380 light years away
Separated by 35 arcsec
Orbital period is at least
100000 years
Mag 3.1, 5.1
 Ursa Major (Big Dipper) Test

Best estimate: Mizar and Alcor 1.1 lyr apart

83 lyrs away
Mizar mag=2.23, Alcor=3.99
Mizar A and B separated by 14 arcsec, corresponds to 340 AU
 More about Resolution
 Telescopes are designed to form images as nearly perfect as the
laws of physics allow.
 To form a sharp image, light waves from a distance source must
meet at the focus of the telescope in phase. Need a good surface.
 Nothing is perfect, light waves arrive in almost perfect phase in a
region surrounding the geometric point of focus
 Light appears as small spot called the “Airy disk”.
 Best you can hope for is 84% total light inside disk, 16% in
fringes.
 The pattern of light generated by a point source passing through a
telescope is called the point spread function (PSF)

Airy = 2.44 λ/A (radians)

Airyfwhm=1.02 λ/A (radians)
Diameter sets limits on what
telescope can see
 Matching Telescope Resolution
and CCD Pixel Size
 Point Spread Function defines the smallest details to be
seen in a telescope image.
 Sample size (pixel size) must be small enough to define the
smallest details
 Nyquist theorem – sampling frequency must be at least two
times the highest frequency present in the original signal
 Applied to image sampling, size of a pixel must be no larger
than half the diameter of the PSF (diffraction disk).
 Images sampled with larger pixels are undersampled, some
of details will be lost.
 Images samples with much more than two pixels across the
core of the diffraction disk are oversampled
 2dpixel=dpsf
 Fmin=Adpixel/0.51λ
 Magnification
 Frequently hailed by commercial telescope makers
but not really important.
 Depends on the eyepiece used
 Magnification = (focal length of primary lens or mirror)/(focal length of eyepiece)
 Galileo’s telescope magnified about 3 times
 Can make any telescope reach large magnifications,
but do you get a useful image?
– Magnification increases the apparent size of an image
– Does not increase the total number of photons collected
 Minimum magnification = 4 x primary diameter (in
inches)
 Maximum magnification = 50 x primary diameter (in
inches)
 Field of View
 Sky that can be seen through a telescope at any one time
 One degree is about twice the diameter of the moon.
 Field of view depends on the design of the optics and the
detector.
 In general, telescopes with small focal ratios (f/3) have large
fields of view. Large focal ratios mean small fields of view.
 Finder scopes have larger fields of view than the “main”
telescope.
 Increasing magnification via eyepieces decreases field of view.
 The Alta CCD chip is 13.3x13.3 mm in size, and when attached
to the 24 inch telescope at prime focus, gives a field of view of
about half a degree (size of the moon).
 Finder scopes have larger field of view
“Seeing”
 Seeing is the quality of observing
conditions induced by the earth’s
atmosphere and the telescope’s
environment
 Low altitude effects
– Areas of different density radiate
energy at different rates
– Causes local convective currents.
– Daily heating of the ground
– Buildings
– Telescope itself, if it is warmer
than its environment.
 Mid- Altitude – topography. It is
not a good idea to build
downwind of anything big
 High Altitude – jet stream, etc.
 Seeing and the
Atmosphere
• Turbulence – short timescale variatons in
atmosphere.
 Where to put an observatory?
 Places with stable atmospheres, like mountaintops high
enough to be over any temperature inversion layers.
Islands surrounded by oceans, where the prevailing winds
have crossed many miles of ocean (laminar flow off the
ocean).
 Also a major factor is unvarying weather patterns,
dominated by high pressure systems. Areas outside these
large high-pressure systems have more variable weather,
and hence a more variable state of atmospheric stability.
 Dry environment
 Review
 Light gathering power  area
of lens/mirror.
– magnitudes
 Resolution ability to separate
close objects
 Actual resolution of a telescope
is limited by “seeing”
 “Seeing” is the apparent size of
a point source like a star
 “Seeing” is dictated by the
atmospheric conditions
– Altitude in the sky
– Water vapor
– Dust
– Environment of the telescope
– scintillation
– At Mt. Cuba – about 3-10 arc
seconds
– Chile – 0.5-1 arc second
 Magnification
 Field of View
Types of Telescopes
 Three Types of Telescopes
 Refractor

 Reflector

 Catadioptric
 Refraction

Diverging lens Converging lens

Which would you use to

construct a telescope?
 Refracting Telescopes

•Has a lens at one end of the telescope

•Light passes through the lens and is refracted
•Lens brings light to a focus at the eyepiece
•Galileo’s telescope was a refractor.

400th Anniversary
Magnification = (focal length of primary lens or mirror)/(focal length of eyepiece)
 History of Refractors
 Earliesttelescopes - Galileo
 Premier telescopes of the 1800s
 Technology peaked in 1887 with 40
inch Yerkes refractor (outside
Chicago)
– Issues:
 Absorbed too much of the light passing
through
 Massive piece of glass sagged under its own
weight

 Galileo

Galileo’s telescope: a 30mm handheld

Refractor
Focused by sliding eyepiece in and out

Galileo Galilei
Born in 1564, died 1642
Famously denounced for his views
on the earth’s motion around the sun
 Yerkes Refractor

40 Inch diameter (102 cm)

 40 inch lens

Tube is 60 feet long and weighs 6 tons

 Disadvantages
 Size
 This is about the
largest solid glass
body that can be
supported on its
edge without
deforming under
its own weight.
 The volume of the
lens must be
good.
40 inch refractor built in 1892
 Disadvantages of Refractors
 Chromatic aberration – light of different
wavelengths is bent differently by the lens!
 Different focuses for different colors!
 Your eye suffers from this problem, plus
inverted image!

aberration achromat
Reflecting Telescopes
Reflecting Telescopes

Want to use mirror to collect and focus light – so can’t

use a plane mirror – use a curved mirror (concave)
Angle of incidence = angle of reflection
Center of curvature
 Reflectors

Primary

Secondary

Use mirrors rather than lenses

•Mirrors are usually parabolic, not flat, to help bring the light to a focus.
•Mirrors have the advantage of being supported from behind.
•Light does not pass through mirrors, so no chromatic aberrations. mirrors began
to replace lenses in larger telescopes.
•Use of second reflection can make tubes shorter.
•Early mirrors were metal – tarnished quickly, hard to polish because you changed
the shape of the mirror. This is the reason the earliest telescopes were refractors.
It was very hard to shape metal to the tolerances needed for reflecting telescopes.
•Later – started using glass with thin silver coating. Tarnished as well, but could
be polished by replacing the silver
•Today use different kinds of high tech coatings and lens materials
 Problems with Reflectors
 Mirror maintenance
 Reflect light back in direction it came
from
 Tarnish

 Optical problems
– Spherical Aberration
– Coma
– Where do you look?
 Spherical Aberration

Hubble Space Telescope is an example of this!

Spherical Aberration

To correct spherical aberration, give your

mirror a parabolic shape.
Spherical Aberration and Coma
 Using a parabolic mirror introduces a
new aberration called coma
 Coma affects objects away from the
central optical axis (off axis).
 Caused by incoming photons that are
not parallel to the parabolic axis.
 Severity is proportional to D2
inversely proportional to focal ratio
Coma
MCAO 24 inch coma
 Types of Reflectors

Newtonian Telescope - earliest design

•1668 – Isaac Newton built the first one
•Mirror 1.3 inches, magnification 35 times
•Mirror from speculum metal –
•an alloy of copper and tin –
•Newton added arsenic for “whiteness”
•Reflected only 16% of light
•Tarnished easily
Newton’s 1668 Telescope
 Herschel 1.2 m reflector (1789)
•William Herschel was a musician with
no astronomical training.
•Hershel’s discovery of Uranus
began serious quest for larger
Telescopes
•Between 1773 and 1795
•William Herschel made
430 mirrors – metal
•Largest 1.2 m
•Was the largest telescope for 50
years.
•Never lived up to potential
•Mirror warped under weight
•Two mirrors were cast
•Took hours to cool down
•Not a Newtonian – the primary
mirror was tilted so you could see
the image by while standing in
front of the telescope.
 Herschel’s 1.2m (40”) Telescope
 First Observation Feb 19, 1787
 “The apparatus for the 40-foot telescope
was by this time so far completed that I
could put the mirror into the tube and
direct it to a celestial object; but having no
eye-glass fixed, not being acquainted with
the focal length which was to be tried, I
went into the tube, and laying down near
the mouth of it I held the eye-glass in my
hand, and soon found the place of the
focus. The object I viewed was the nebula
in the belt of Orion, and I found the figure
of the mirror, though far from perfect,
better than I had expected. It showed four
small stars in the nebula and many more.
The nebula was extremely bright.“
Herschel, 1787
 Herschel’s Telescope

Image taken in 1839 by

Herschel’s son, John. Telescope’s first mirror on
display in the Science Museum
in London
 The Leviathan of Parsontown
 Built in 1842
– 4 tons of molten metal
– Took 16 weeks to cool
– 1st attempt broke right before installation
 72 inches
 First really good, large reflecting telescope

 Discovered Neptune’s moon Triton

 Discovered Uranus’s moons Ariel and

Umbriel
The Leviathan
The Leviathan
 Cassegrain Reflector

24 inch telescope

• 1672 – Frenchman Guillaume Cassegrain produced the first

 Catadioptric

Schmidt Cassegrain –
Uses both lenses and mirrors. Uses spherical mirror, with correcting
lens at center of curvature.

Spheroidal Parabolic
 Telescopes today
 Refractors still used by amateurs
– Simple design
– Easy to use
– Great for planets, the moon, and resolving binary stars.
– No obstruction from a secondary mirror or diagonal.
– Have evolved from small, manually pointed objects to
sophisticated, computer controlled instrument.
 Reflectors are used in modern telescopes.
 Telescopes for all wavelengths of light!
 Review of Telescopes/Properties
 Basic Terminology – aperture, focal
length, focal ratio
 Properties dependent on size of the
telescope
– Light Gathering Ability
 Magnitude system
– Resolution
 Seeing – atmospheric turbulence
 Other Properties
– Field of View – f/ratio
– Magnification – focal length/eyepiece focal
length
 Review of Telescopes
 Types of telescopes
– Refractor – earliest
– Reflector
 Newtonian
 Cassegrain
 Earliest –metal mirrors (1750s)
 Glass mirrors – 1850s
– Catadioptric
 Optical problems
– Chromatic aberration
– Lens size/thickness
– Spherical aberration
– Coma
 Modern telescopes
 Modern Astronomical
Telescopes

Major observatories: Hawaii, Chile,

Texas, Canary Islands, Arizona,
Australia, California, South Africa, Typical structure: Telescope
China housed inside large dome with
slit that opens.
 Silver Coated Mirrors
 1856 – German chemist Justus von Liebig found he could
use a mixture of silver nitrate, caustic potash, ammonia
and sugar to deposit a reflective silver film onto a glass
plate.
 Leon Foucault (Paris), Carl August von Steinheil (Munich)
applied the process to create silvered glass telescope
mirrors.
 Silvered glass advantages
– Lighter
– Less brittle
– More reflective
– Easier to make
– Easier to maintain
 Henry Draper – 1864 – “On the Construction and Use of a
Silvered Glass Telescope” was standard instruction book
 5 meter Hale telescope
The mount needed to support
this monster is itself quite large.
It is an equatorial mount, one
axis is aligned with the rotation
axis of the earth, like the
telescopes upstairs.

• uses the largest single piece of glass possible to still have a good
mirror. Monolithic. Anything larger will deform under its own weight.
• 200 inch pyrex primary mirror. Weighs 14.5 tons (just the mirror).
20 tons total.
• Pyrex was favored material until about 30 years ago – low thermal
expansion
• The tube of the telescope is 60 ft. long.
• The telescope was built (1947) before the age of lightweight materials.
• The whole telescope weighs 500 tons.
 History of Palomar
 George Ellery Hale – ardent proponent of
the “new astrophysics”
 Faculty at University of Chicago 1892
 Secured money for 40 inch Yerkes
refractor
 Secured funding for 60 inch and 100 inch
telescopes at Mount Wilson in California
(1908)
 All happened around the time that Edwin
Hubble was measuring distance to
galaxies for the first time. He wanted a
bigger telescope.
 Problems
 Hale telescope is about largest mirror that can be
constructed from Pyrex and not deform under its
own weight
– Mechanical rigidity
 Thickness of mirror proportional to cube of the
diameter
 Weight of a solid mirror proportional to D5!
 Expensive and impractical
 Two approaches to reducing weight
– Thin mirrors
– Honeycomb mirrors
Palomar Today
 The MMT
Multiple Mirror Telescope

Mt. Hopkins, 30miles south of Tucson, AZ

 The MMT
The MMT was a telescope built before its time.
 Built in the 1980s.
 It revolutionized the idea of making telescopes.
 It was a 6 meter telescope, which means the primary
mirror was 6 meters in diameter.
 But the mirror was not solid. It was constructed from 6
separate 1 meter mirrors. They were combined together
to function as one mirror.
 Equivalent to 4.4m in area, but cost only 1/3 as much.
 It was ahead of its time because technology was not
quite up to keeping the mirror segments aligned.
 Need precise alignment to maintain a good focus.
– Wavelength of light ~5000 Å (5x10-7 m)
 This is done by using “actuators”, or small pistons, mounted
behind each telescope mirror to push and pull on it.
 the MMT worked, but the not well.
Multiple Mirrors
 MMT after

Refitted with a single 6.5 meter thin mirror - 2000

The Keck Telescopes

Located at Mauna Kea in Hawaii

at 14,000 ft.
Primary mirror for each is
10 meters (33 ft) in diameter.
The Keck Mirrors
•Mirror is made of 36 individual
lightweight segments.
•Each segment is 1.8 m wide,
75 mm (3 inches) thick.
Made of “Zerodur”, artificial material
with low thermal expansion
Ceramic material
•Each segment is so smooth that
if it were to the width of
the earth, the highest
mountain would be 3 feet high.
•In other words, accurate to
1000th the width of human hair.
•System of motors keep the
mirrors aligned – active optics.
 Mirror Support

168 electronic sensors mounted on the edges of the mirror segments.

3 actuators per segment
Sensors compare height difference between each segment.
Actuators move accordingly.
Aligned two times a second
 More facts about Keck
 Total mirror weight is just 14.4 tons.
 The mount is an alt/az mount, which means that it is not
aligned with the rotational axis of the earth.
– Mount weighs 270 tons.
– Made of steel because it is important to be nonflexible.
– Alt/Az mounts are cheaper to make the equatorial.
– But are also more difficult to control.
 They go through some effort to maintain temperature
equilibrium.
– Important for seeing. If the telescope is hotter than the
surroundings, it radiates energy, heats the surrounding air
and makes the images seem to boil.
– Chill the interior of both Keck domes.
 Prevents temperature deformation of the mirror
 Kept at or below freezing (not such a big deal at Mauna
Kea).
– Each dome has 700,000 cubic feet of air. The air is totally
replaced every 5 minutes.
 The Very Large Telescope (VLT)

•Located in Chile, in the southern hemisphere

•Is actually a system of 4 telescopes that can work together
VLT Today
The VLT
•Four 8.2 meter telescopes
•Each telescope can be used separately or
combined into one telescope (interferometry)
• Light-collecting ability which is proportional to
its area.
• Mirror’s ability to resolve detail. This is
proportional to its diameter.
•If one removes pieces from a hypothetical
16 m mirror, one reduces its light collecting
ability, but not necessarily its resolution.
•So if you use two telescopes separated by
some distance, you can get the resolution of one
big telescope.
•Alt/Az mount as well (big telescopes are).
•Primary mirror is 8.2m (600 inches) wide
and 80 mm thick. Made of Zerodur.
•Mirror weighs 50 tons
•Secondary mirror is 1.1 meters made of beryllium.
•Weigh 42 kg.
VLT Control Room
VLT Images
The First Image of an Extra Solar
Planet?
Gemini – The Twins
 Gemini (the Twins)
 Another example of a large telescope is Gemini.
 2 8.1 m telescopes, one in Hawaii and one in Chile.
 Main mirrors are single pieces of glass.
– Honeycombed – material removed from behind
– hexagonal blocks that have been fused in a special furnace –
spin casting. The entire furnace, containing the mould,
rotates so that the surface forms a parabola.
– Keeps spinning as furnace cools.
– 20 cm thick.
– Very accurate polishing.
 Secondary mirrors formed same way
– 1 meter
– Supporting ribs 3mm wide
– Weigh 50 kg
 Because the mirror is so thin, it is prone to deformation.
– Complex mirror cell system of 120 actuators which push and
pull parts of the mirror every few minutes.
Gemini Mirror
Mirror Polishing
Housekeeping at Gemini
Gemini Dome
Gemini Images
Subaru Telescope
•8.2 meter telescope
•Main mirror is 30 cm thick.
•Took three years to produce the piece of glass
this mirror came from and another 4 years to
produce a finished mirror.
•Uses 261 actuators to maintain mirror shape
•One unique aspect – it has a magnetic drive.
Most telescopes use a system of gears.
•Unique dome designed to reduce turbulence.
•Cylinder rather than a hemisphere
•Prevents warm/turbulent air from entering
from the outside
Subaru Mirror
Subaru Dome
 Telescopes of the Future

LSST - Chile

Thirty Meter Telescope - Hawaii

Giant Magellan Telescope - Chile

 European ELT

• 39 meter (128 ft) telescope

• 798 segments in mirror
• Construction began in 2017 – finish 2024
Construction of ELT
 ELT Mirror

798 segments
The Giant Magellen Telescope
Construction Site
Giant Magellen Telescope
Mirror

7 Mirror Segments – each 8.4m

combined for 25 m total aperture
The Finished Product
 LSST

• 8.4 m mirror (27 ft)

• 3200 megapixel camera
Calibration telescope
LSST Telescope
 The Camera

• Largest camera ever constructed

(5.5x9.8ft)
• Weight 6200 lbs
• Sensitive 0.3 – 1 micron in
wavelength
• Image surface is 25 inches
• 189 16 megapixel detectors
• 3.2 gigapixels
• Displaying one full sky image
required 1500 HD TV displays
Detector Size
Filters
 LSST Output
 6 million gigabytes per year
 Equivalent to 800,000 images with a “normal” 8 megapixel
camera.
 Final raw image archive – 60 Petabytes
 Bandwidth at the observatory – 600 gigabytes per second
 10 million alerts per night (things that change)
 11 official data releases
 5.5 million total images
 First data release – 350 billion sources
 DR11 – 7 trillion sources
Telescopes in Space!
Hubble Space Telescope
 Hubble Space Telescope
 Actually a small
telescope – 2.4
meters
 Big advantage – It
is above the
atmosphere!
Excellent seeing!
 Disadvantage –
very expensive
 Deep Field

• 342
separate
images
• 100 hrs
total
exposure
Hubble Ultra Deep Field
 Hubble extreme Deep Field

• Compiled 10 years of
images taken 2003-
2004
• Center of Hubble Ultra
Deep Field
• Field of view is a tiny
fraction of the size of
the Moon.
• Contains about 5000
galaxies.
ALMA
• Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter array
• Altitude is 16570 ft.
• Atacama desert is one of the driest places on Earth.
• Most of the light comes from very cold objects like large clouds in
space
• 66 high precision antennas
• Main array is 50 antennas, each 12 m in diameter
• Telescopes act together as a single instrument
• Can be arranged in different configurations
• Can be spread over a distance as large as 16 kilometers
ALMA Observations of Jupiter

• ALMA peers 50 km below the visible cloud deck

• Bright regions show ammonia gas disruptions
associated with visible storm in one of Jupiter’s
belts.
ALMA and Solar Systems

• HD 169142
• Interpreted as single 10x Earth
mass planet that is migrating
inward, disturbing the disk and
creating multiple thin rings.
ALMA and the Center of the
Milky Way
• Clouds of carbon monoxide
• 26,000 light years away
• Orbiting about 1 light year from
the black hole (red circle)
ALMA and Other Galaxies
• Center of galaxy NGC
5643
• Seyfert galaxy
• Bright central
regions
• Black hole believed
to be accreting
• This image shows
energetic ionized gas
flowing out from the
center of the galaxy
• Image combines ALMA
and VLT images
• Spiral rotating disk (red)
of carbon monoxide
• Outflowing gas traced by
ionized oxygen and
hydrogen (orange and
blue
 Chandra X-Ray Telescope

Visible Light
How an X-Ray telescope works
Centaurus A
More Centaurus A
M31 in X-Rays
X-Rays
JWST

JWST deployment
Telescopes in the Infrared
 Interesting Factoids
 Launch Date:25 August 2003
 Launch Vehicle/Site:Delta 7920H ELV / Cape Canaveral,
 FloridaEstimated Lifetime:2.5 years (minimum); 5+ years
 Orbit:Earth-trailing, Heliocentric
 Wavelength Coverage:3 - 180 microns
 Telescope:85 cm diameter (33.5 Inches), f/12 lightweight
Beryllium, cooled to less 5.5 K
 Diffraction Limit:6.5 microns
 Science Capabilities:Imaging / Photometry, 3-180 microns
Spectroscopy, 5-40 microns
 Spectrophotometry, 50-100 microns
 Planetary Tracking:1 arcsec / sec
 Cryogen / Volume:Liquid Helium / 360 liters (95 Gallons)
 Launch Mass:950 kg (2094 lb) [Observatory: 851.5 kg, Cover:
6.0 kg, Helium: 50.4 kg, Nitrogen Propellant: 15.6 kg]
Telescopes in Radio
Saturn in Radio
Wilkinson Microwave Observatory
What is the Background Radiation?
 Discoveredin 1964 Penzias and Wilson
– Looking for source of noise from their radio telescope
– 1% of static on television is due to background radiation
 Blackbody radiation
– T=2.76 K
– Isotropic
 Comes from the early universe, about 300000 yrs after Big Bang
– Today radiation travels freely – universe is transparent
– Earlier, universe was filled with radiation, and hydrogen plasma
– Density was high enough so any radiation barely travelled any
distance before being absorbed and reemitted.
– Matter and radiation in thermal contact – temperatures were identical
– Thermalization.
– As universe expanded, density lessened and temperature dropped.
– Universe became transparent.
– Matter recombined – electrons and protons formed hydrogen atoms.
– This happened at about 3000 K, background radiation was released at
this point